Now let me start out by giving you the story here in 2 Samuel chapter 10.
We're going to go other places tonight and look at other stories tonight.
But beginning in verse number 1, the Bible here tells a story.
It says in verse number 1,
It came to pass after this, that the king of the children of Ammon died,
and Hanan his son reigned in his stead.
Then said David,
I will show kindness unto Hanan the son of Nahash,
as his father showed kindness unto me.
And David sent to comfort him by the hand of his servants for his father.
And David's servants came into the land and stood the banner.
So basically David had been friends with this king's father.
And when Nahash died and this younger man Hunan comes into play here as the new king,
David just wanted to let him know,
Hey, I'm still your friend, I'm your ally,
and I just want to send an amassage of peace here,
and comfort you because your father has passed away,
just to give you our condolences and our respects.
Very nice gesture of David.
But in verse 3 it says,
And the princes of the children of Ammon said unto Hanan their lord,
Thinkest thou that David did honour thy father,
that he had sent comforters unto thee?
Had not David rather sent his servants unto thee to search the city,
and to spy it out and overthrow it?
So they basically put this dumb idea in his head that these guys are really just spies.
They're paranoid about it,
and they're telling him these guys are not here just to be nice.
Well look at verse 4.
What Hanan does,
Wherefore Hanan took David's servants,
and shaved off the one half of their beards,
and cut off their garments in the middle,
even to their buttocks,
and sent them away.
When they told it to David, he said to meet them,
because the men were greatly ashamed.
And the king said,
Tarry it Jericho until your beards be grown,
and then return.
And when the two of Ammon saw that they stank before David,
I'll just paraphrase it,
they basically hired the Syrians,
and decided we're going to have to go to war here,
because we have mistreated David's servants.
How did they mistreat them?
They shaved off half their beard,
and they cut off half of their garments down the middle.
Basically you can tell which way they did the beard.
Obviously right here was where they did it.
And so they cut off half the beard this way,
they left the other half of the beard this way.
And then they did the same thing with their clothes right down the middle.
You say, why is it missing their buttocks?
Because it's a shame here for the nakedness of your buttocks to be seen,
according to the Bible.
It's elsewhere in the Bible, it's a shameful thing.
And it's basically explaining also the line that they drew
when they cut their garments in half.
And so these men look like an idiot.
I mean, think about it.
Imagine, you went out,
you're the ambassador to this other nation,
you're an important person,
you're a respected person,
you're a godly person,
because you're working for King David,
and he's put you in this very important position.
And you've been basically mishandled to the point
where you have to come back to your family,
you have to come back to your nation,
humiliated, half naked,
and half the beard gone, looking like a fool.
That's why David, sensitive to this,
basically sent people out and said,
look, don't come home looking like that.
Don't come home to your family like that.
Don't let your children see you like that.
He said, you need to go somewhere
and take it easy in Jericho,
let your beards grow back,
put some clothes on, for crying out loud,
and then come back,
and then you can be respected
and you can have your dignity.
Now you say, what's the deal with the beards?
Well, our obvious reaction is probably just to say,
well, just shave off the other half and you'll be fine.
Because I think the vast majority of men
in the United States don't wear beards today.
But in that day, in that culture,
men wore beards.
I mean, it was just the norm for a man to have a beard.
Now, here's the thing about this.
There are some people who think
that it's wrong to have a beard.
Now, I find that kind of bizarre
because of the fact that David had a beard
and Jesus had a beard and Isaiah had a beard
and all these guys in the Bible had a beard.
But then, some people will say,
it's wrong not to have a beard.
Now, here's what's wrong with that.
There are literally millions
and hundreds of millions of people
in this world who cannot even grow a beard.
Did you know that?
Who here is a man
and you cannot grow a whole beard?
You have to raise your hand.
Raise your hand.
You cannot grow...
Look, I did a little research on this
just because I was researching this sermon.
And there are vast proportions of Chinese men
who cannot grow a beard,
even hardly at all.
And you know,
there are many, many Native American men
who cannot grow a beard.
I have known men who were literally
in their late 20s, 30s
who do not have any facial hair
and they do not shave whatsoever.
I mean, it's just a fact.
So it's ridiculous to say,
you know, you've got to have a beard
or don't have a beard.
But these men, this nation,
the Jews grew beards.
It was a natural thing
that they grew thick beards
and they'd wear a beard
and it was what they wanted to look like.
I mean, they wore a beard.
It was their style, it was their status
of being manly, you know.
And it's not that you're not manly
if you don't have a beard
because there are different cultures
and different nationalities
that have their own look.
And God made us look the way that we look.
And He made all the different people
That's not the point here.
But these men here, half a beard
wasn't going to work
and they didn't want to shave off the whole thing.
They probably did shave it off
just so that it would grow in.
But they basically had to wait until
it would be grown to look
the way they wanted to look and get dressed.
What I want to preach about today
and I'm going to show a bunch of other places.
I'm just starting with this story.
It's basically the idea of being half in
and half out in your Christianity.
It looks foolish to the world.
Let me tell you something.
When you're half righteous,
half unrighteous,
when you want to look half like the world
and half Christian,
you look like a fool.
And I think that's what God's trying to symbolize here.
What God's trying to show us.
You see, the naked half
represents that which is wicked,
that which is ungodly.
Because wickedness, or nakedness,
is a shame, the Bible says.
It's a shame to be naked and nude.
Somebody needs to tell that
to the society that we're living in.
Because today's society,
many people are literally walking around half-naked.
Now, they may not cut it down the middle like these guys.
They may not have the right half clothed
and the left half not clothed.
But let me tell you something.
When your thighs are exposed,
you're half-naked.
Because the Bible says,
in Exodus 28, 42,
that you're to be clothed
from the loins to the thighs
that your nakedness be not seen.
He was talking to men
and he was talking about the pants
that they should wear,
the priests,
in Exodus 28, 42.
He said you need to be clothed
from your loins unto your thighs
that your nakedness be not seen.
And let me tell you something.
When you're in that bikini,
or swimsuit,
or whatever you want to call it,
your colored underwear
that you call a swimsuit,
and that makes it okay,
you are half-naked.
And it's not honorable.
You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
The Bible says,
that thou mayest be clothed
and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear.
Revelation 3, 18.
We ought not be naked,
but see,
nakedness abounds today,
and nakedness can symbolize
worldliness,
ungodliness,
and wickedness.
And then I would say that the side
that was clothed would represent
righteousness.
Godliness.
Doing the right thing.
Being clothed.
And that's the way many Christians are.
They're half-in and they're half-out.
Look at you in Acts 20.
Acts 20.
New Testament.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Adam.
They're half-in and half-out.
They can't decide who they want to be.
And you know what this reminds me of?
The modern-day, worldly, liberal,
Christian, contemporary,
New Evangelical movement.
They can't decide whether they're
worldly or Christian.
You know, they look like a rock band.
They play heavy metal rock and roll,
but they're jamming for Jesus.
And if you get the lyrics and figure out
what they're saying,
it has something to do with God or Jesus
or the Bible.
But let me tell you something.
We ought not try to see if we can be
halfway like the world.
The music of the world with Jesus' words.
You know, the look and dress of the world
with the doctrine of the Bible.
The music of the world in our church
and then Bible preaching
as if somehow it's going to balance out.
No, my friend, you're going to end up looking
just as foolish and just as ridiculous
as these men who are ambassadors for David
who represents the Son of David, Jesus Christ.
And if you're going to be an ambassador
for Jesus Christ,
you want to be effective,
you better have a full beard
and be fully clothed,
you know, figuratively speaking.
You better put on the whole armor of God.
You better be all the way in
or you're not going to be an effective ambassador.
Imagine if those guys had another stop
on the diplomatic rally.
Maybe they were to go from Jerusalem
up to the tomb of Ammon
and then swing down to Moab.
How effective do you think they would have been
when they got to Moab?
Do you think that the Moabites
would have taken them seriously
when they showed up looking that way?
Half naked, half bearded?
I almost shaved off half my beard
just to preach the sermon that way,
just to give you the whole event,
but I decided not to
because I didn't want to take a vacation
to Jericho right now.
But I literally thought about
shaving off half the beard.
I did not think about coming half clothed.
I was going to be here.
But anyway, the point is,
they would have looked foolish
and no one would take them seriously.
And let me tell you something.
Many times, we as Christians,
we wonder why people don't take us seriously
when we give them the Gospel.
We wonder why we go to school
if you're in school.
You know, I homeschool my children,
but we wonder why if we go to school
and try to give the Gospel to our friends,
we wonder why they don't take us seriously
because they can see that you're half in and half out.
They won't take it seriously.
We wonder why people at work
don't take us seriously
because they see oftentimes
our carnality and worldliness
and they wonder how serious we really are.
And we're like an ambassador for Christ
coming to them just, you know, halfway,
half in, half done.
Look at Acts chapter 20.
I'll give you another example
of someone who was half in and half out.
Acts 20 verse 7 says,
And upon the first day of the week,
when the disciples came together
to break bread,
Paul preached unto them,
ready to depart on the morrow,
and continued his speech until midnight.
This is a long sermon.
He starts preaching
and he preaches all the way to midnight.
And at midnight,
the Bible says here in verse 9,
And there sat in a window
a certain young man named Eutychus,
being fallen into a deep sleep.
So this guy just couldn't handle this long preaching.
He finally just passes out at about midnight.
He just can't take it.
But because he was half in the window,
half in the house,
and half out of the house,
sitting on the window,
it says,
As Paul was long preaching,
he sunk down with sleep
and fell down from the third loft
and was taken up dead.
So if you're going to sit in the window,
don't sit in the third story window
and then fall asleep.
That's what happened to this guy.
So he falls out the window
and he was taken up dead.
And Paul went down and fell on him
and embraced him and said,
Trouble not yourself,
for his life is in him.
When they said he was taken dead,
they thought he was dead.
But Paul ran down and checked him
and it turned out he was still alive.
When he therefore was come up again
and had broken bread and eaten
and talked a long while,
even till break of day,
so he departed.
This was a long service.
And they brought the young man alive
and were not a little comforted.
That means they were comforted a lot.
And so this guy was sitting in the window,
which I believe represents people
who were half in and half out of church.
You know, why not just get all the way in, Eunuchus?
What, are you trying to see
what's going on out in the world?
Is that why you're sitting in the window?
You want to just smell the smells of the world
and see the sights of the world?
You just haven't fully decided yet?
Look, if you're half in and half out,
guess which way you fall?
Out.
Nobody actually falls into church.
You know, I was just sporadically going to church
and the next thing I knew
I was just coming to all three services
and going to soul money.
I'm not really sure how it happened.
But you know what?
When people are half in and half out of church
and just sporadically come to church,
it is easy for week after week after week to go by
and for them to realize,
wow, I haven't been to church in a month.
Wow, I haven't been to church in a month and a half.
I mean, there are people who come to our church
and literally I think that they don't come here anymore
and then they'll come back
and they've literally not gone anywhere else in the meantime.
Because we have some people who come to our church
literally like once every two or three months
and we're their church.
I'm glad when they're here
and I thank God for every time they show up.
But there are literally people who come to our church
and we are their only church
and they show up about once every two months.
Man, get in.
Get all the way in.
I mean, get in Sunday morning.
Get in Sunday night.
I mean, get involved in church
because you're going to fall out.
It's not safe to be half in and half out.
It looks foolish to the world as we saw in 2 Samuel 10.
Just make up your mind to just sell out for God
and to just get all the way in.
Don't be a eudicist.
Let me give you another example.
Look at Hosea chapter 7.
Old Testament toward the end of the Old Testament,
the book of Hosea.
Hosea chapter number 7.
Here's another illustration that God gives.
And while you're turning there,
I'll just quote for you from the book of Revelation.
In the book of Revelation, of course,
Jesus Christ gives an admonition to the seven churches,
and he says,
And the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write,
These things saith the Amen,
the faithful and true witness,
the beginning of the creation of God.
I know thy works,
that thou art neither cold nor hot.
I would thou work, cold or hot.
So then, because thou art lukewarm
and neither cold nor hot,
I will spew thee out of my mouth,
because thou sayest,
I am rich and increased with goods,
and have needed nothing,
and knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable
and poor and blind and naked.
I counsel thee to buy of me
gold tried in the fire,
that thou mayest be rich,
and white raiment,
that thou mayest be clothed,
and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear,
and anoint thine eyes with eye-sab,
that thou mayest see.
As many as I love,
I rebuke and chasten.
He sellest, therefore, and repents.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock.
If any man hear my voice,
and open the door,
I will come in to him,
and will sup with him,
and he with me,
dim that overcometh while I grant
to sit with thee in my throne,
even as I also overcame,
and am set down with my Father in his throne.
He that hath an ear,
let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the church edge.
That's not just a message for the church of Laodicea.
We at Faithful Word Baptist Church
need to make sure that God doesn't look down upon us
and say,
I know your works, that you're lukewarm.
So then, because thou art lukewarm,
I will spew thee out of my mouth,
because thou sayest not,
you know, I won't put the whole thing in.
The point is here,
God doesn't want lukewarm Christianity.
He doesn't want balance,
when that means hot plus cold.
Balance.
No, he said,
I would, thou art cold or hot,
either get in or get out, you know,
get in and sell out for God,
give it a hundred percent.
He said it makes him sick
when people can't decide who they want to serve.
You can't serve God and mammon.
You can't be both cold and hot.
You can't be both in and out.
One day you're either going in or you're going out.
You can only stay in that window for so long.
And chances are you're going out.
You're going out from the third floor
and it's going to hurt when you hit the ground.
And so the Bible says here in Hosea 7,
where I had you turn,
look at verse 2.
The Bible says,
And they consider not in their hearts
that I remember all their wickedness.
Now their own doings have beset them about,
they are before my face.
They make the king glad with their wickedness,
and the princes with their lies.
They are all adulterers,
as an oven heated by the baker,
who ceaseth from raising
after he hath kneaded the dough until it be leavened.
In the day of our king,
the princes have made him sick with bottles of wine.
He stretched out his hand with scorn,
as for they have made ready their heart like an oven,
while as they lie in wait,
their baker sleepeth all night.
In the morning it burneth as a flaming fire.
They are all hot as an oven,
and have devoured their judges.
All their kings are fallen.
There is none among them that calleth unto me.
Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people.
Ephraim is a cake not turned.
Now, what is this cake not turned?
Who's ever made pancakes before?
Now look, I'm no cook,
but I've made pancakes.
That's something almost everybody's made.
My wife claims I can't even boil water,
but I can make pancakes.
That's one of the few things I make.
Because I know how to take a little dollop of the dough.
Is that what you call it, the dough?
Is that when you're making it?
The batter.
The batter, thank you.
That didn't sound right.
So I take a little dollop.
Is dollop forever, or is that only for sour cream?
I take a little dollop for a little...
Scoop.
Oh, great.
Man, I'm helping.
Yeah, that's really helping.
Talk about the blind way to the mind.
So I'll just stick with dollop.
That sounds fancy.
I take a little dollop of the batter.
And, you know, wait a minute, first...
Well, not first.
First I burn the first batch,
because I forgot to butter the pan, okay.
Then I butter the pan,
which I should have originally done.
Then I put my dollop of batter down, okay.
And here's how I know...
Who knows how you know when to turn the pancakes over?
Bubbles.
Bubbles, that's right.
When you start seeing the bubbles,
you flip it over,
and then it's perfect every time, right?
Kind of.
Sort of.
So that's what this is talking about,
this cake not turned.
This is talking about a baker, okay,
and a cook,
and he's making all kinds of food and everything,
and basically he gets drunk.
That's what we just read in Jose's set.
He gets drunk and falls asleep on the job,
and he doesn't turn over the pancake.
And it basically ignites a kitchen fire.
That's what we just read in Jose's set.
Does everybody understand that?
He ignites a kitchen fire
because he cooked one side,
and he cooked one side so much
that it was literally burned,
but the other side is not cooked at all.
If you don't turn over a pancake,
it's impossible to make a pancake
without turning it over.
And that's what he said here.
He said, look,
you've mixed yourself among the people.
Verse 8, Ephraim,
he had mixed himself among the people.
Ephraim is a cake not turned.
When you're half in the world,
when you've got one foot in the world
and one foot in living for God,
you are a cake not turned,
and the whole thing is going to taste bad.
You can't just say,
well, just enjoy the good half.
You know, that's like meat,
something that I would do,
you know, if I burned the pancake.
I'm not going to throw that pancake away.
I try to shave the black off into the sink,
and when I'm done cooking,
whatever I make,
there will be this black powder,
just all over the sink when I'm done,
whatever I'm making,
and that's where I have to shave off all the burnt part,
you know, because it's still fine,
but you know what?
You can't just shave off the burger,
just wipe off the uncooked.
No, you've ruined the pancake.
The whole thing's trash.
You can't be half in and half out
when it comes to things of God.
Choose you this day whom you will serve,
Joshua said.
As for me and my house,
we will serve the Lord,
and everybody wants to have it both ways in life.
They want to have their cake and eat it too.
You know, they want to have everything
that the world has to offer
and everything that God has to offer,
but let me tell you something.
Worldliness will ruin your Christian life.
It will ruin your walk with God,
and you will never fully experience
what this church or any church
or walking with God or serving God
has to offer until you get all the way in.
You can't just say,
well, I'm going to try faith-poor Baptist church.
You know, I'll just try it.
Well, if you want to try it,
then try it by getting out stolen with us.
You know, otherwise,
you haven't really fully tried it
just by coming to a service.
I mean, if you get all the way in,
that's where the blessings will be,
and that's where you'll say,
wow, this is a great church.
You know, if you just kind of dip your toe
into the water of faithful word,
you might not understand,
you know, well, I don't know.
The other fun center down the street
has more to offer, you know,
Grace Community Fun Center
or wherever you want to go,
because when you're half in, half out,
you don't get it.
The cake doesn't make any sense.
I mean, if somebody served you a pancake
and you've never had one
and said this is a pancake, try it.
And the top is wet dough
and the bottom is fully cooked.
You know, it's kind of crunchy
and kind of wet on top of your mouth.
They're going to say, I don't get it.
I don't understand it.
Why, you know, this Christian life is a drag.
Yeah, that's because you're not all the way in yet.
That's because you haven't cooked both sides yet.
That's because you're half in and half out.
That's because you're not sold out,
separated a hundred percent.
Why don't you just jump in?
You know, I don't want a trial size of Christianity.
I want a family economy size pack,
not some sampler that came in the mail.
I want the one from Sam's Club that comes on.
I want to put a pallet in the back of my van.
That's what I want.
I don't want a little one time use detergent thing
that's just enough for one load.
You know, you ever get one of those in the mail?
I want to get a whole pallet
of extra strength detergent Tide.
You know, I'm not trying Tide.
I want to use Tide for the rest of my life.
I want orange boxes on a pallet strapped down with plastic
unloaded into my yard
and have to literally take the door off the hinges
to get it into my house.
That's how I want to be with Christianity.
I want to buy a lifetime supply right now.
Somebody asked me yesterday,
you know, are you ever going to move away from Phoenix?
What would it take to get you to move away from Phoenix?
I said, no, I want to die in Phoenix.
I said, I've already bought my tubes.
I haven't really been, I was just saying.
It sounds cool though.
I bought my tube sewn in Phoenix.
I'm here for life, but I am here for life.
You know, I'm not trying it.
I'm not just trying out past rent.
I've been trying it for the last four and a half years.
I'm going to see how it goes.
I want, you know, I'm serving God for life.
You know, for the last 12 years, I've knocked doors every week.
I'm just going on my 12th year anniversary.
In fact, I've just had my 12th year.
It's been 12 years since I started my doors
and virtually every week for the last 12 years
and many times every day, depending on what phase of life I was in,
I have knocked doors and preached the gospel to every creature for 12 years.
I'm not trying it.
You know, you might try soul winning
and maybe nobody will even get saved.
Who went soul winning today and your group didn't see anybody safe?
Put it back. See?
I mean, you know, you go out sometimes even for hours
and don't get anybody saved.
I mean, that's normal.
You don't try it.
You go out and you go out and you work and you work
and you labor and you labor and you get results.
Eventually, you will come rejoicing,
bringing your sheaves with you.
He said, he that goeth forth and weepeth,
bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing,
bringing his sheaves with him.
Instantly. It might not be the first time.
I took Brother Dave out soul winning twice for more than two hours each,
his first time soul winning and having nobody saved.
And I told him, I said,
Stick with it. Stick with it.
It's going to work. It works. I'm telling you.
And he told me, he's like, Don't worry.
He said, I'm not quitting until we get somebody saved.
I said, then you're going to quit?
He said, I'm not quitting until we get somebody saved.
And I'm like, what?
No, I'm just kidding. But I do.
I'm not quitting it.
He's not just trying it.
It's what I want to do.
And he's been doing it ever since.
Doing it and doing it and doing it.
And you know what? He's seen a lot of people saying that.
Because he kept doing it.
He wasn't just going to try it and say,
Oh, this doesn't work.
Maybe we need to do something different.
No, I'll do it the Bible's way, thank you very much.
And daily in the temple and in every house,
they cease not to teach and preach Jesus Christ.
Hey, I'll do God's method.
Open thy mouth boldly
to make known the mystery of the Gospel.
I'll do God's method.
Preach the Gospel to every creature.
I'll do God's method.
I've taught you publicly from house to house.
Hey, I'll do God's method of opening my Bible
and showing someone with a tear in the eye
how to be saved.
That's God's method. That's all we need.
We don't need some new method.
We just need to quit being half in and half out
about the method that we use.
And just get in.
I mean, look, are we King James Bible only or not?
Well, kind of. That's not good enough.
Amen.
My license plate doesn't say I'm half KJV only.
My license plate on my car says KJV only.
It doesn't say KJV's the best.
Because the best implies
that there's another one in there, isn't there?
Wow, the new King James.
Boy, we've got a brochure out there.
Jerry, what happened to that brochure?
Brett, somebody, I don't know. I remember that brochure.
I had a really good brochure out there.
I told you about it. I didn't show you.
I had a brochure out there.
It was like a poster you unfolded.
It just showed all the garbage in the new King James.
I'm going to order 50 of them.
People need to know this stuff.
But we need to get a strong stand
and say the King James Bible is the Word of God,
not this half in and half out.
Well, it's the only one we use
because it's kind of the best we've got now, today.
That's what we're using today.
Something else better might come down the pike.
They're coming out with a new version every day.
Who knows what they're going to come out with tomorrow?
The new, living, watery, fiery, amplified version.
Or whatever.
Whatever new, young...
It's funny, everybody's got to have a different Bible.
The teen Bible.
The teen study Bible.
The ladies' Bible.
What are they going to come out with next?
If you're a Filipino on your second marriage
between the age of 35 and 45,
this is the Bible you're using.
It's the same Bible for everybody.
We want some kind of a personalized Christianity,
a personal relationship.
No, it's God's Word.
It's the Bible.
Oh, this one's easier for some people to understand.
You know what? It doesn't matter.
Learn English.
Learn the Bible.
This is what it says.
If you can't figure out what the endowment
after being in church more than five times,
then get in an ESL class or something.
Seriously.
Thou means you.
Done. Problem solved.
Now get a King James.
That's all you need to know.
I don't want to spend too much time on that,
but we need to get all the way in.
God doesn't like this half in, half out, lukewarm.
And people sometimes call it balance.
A little balance in your life.
You don't want to read too much Bible.
Don't get too into church.
You can't get too into church.
You can't read the Bible too much.
You can't win too many souls to cry.
You can't get too zealous.
You can't get too excited.
And people will try to douse your fire.
They'll try to curb your enthusiasm.
No, you need to just not listen to the naysayers
and just jump in and get 100% on
and just be living for God.
Let's look at another example.
Nehemiah chapter 13.
Nehemiah chapter 13 verse 23.
Nehemiah's in the Old Testament,
shortly before the book of Psalms.
You can find Psalms, maybe just go backwards,
Psalms in the dead center of the Bible.
Go backwards through Job,
get through Esther, get into Nehemiah.
Look at Nehemiah chapter 13.
It says in Nehemiah 13 verse 23,
Nehemiah 13, 23,
In those days also saw Jews that had married wives
of Ammon and of Moab,
and their children spake half in the speech of Ashtod,
and could not speak in the Jews' language,
but according to the language of each people.
And I contended with them, and cursed them,
and smote certain of them,
and plucked off their hair,
and made them swear by God,
saying, You shall not give your daughters unto their sons,
nor take their daughters unto your sons or for yourselves.
Now, Nehemiah wasn't a very nice guy.
Look at verse 26, it says,
Did not Solomon, king of Israel, sin by these things?
Yet among many nations was there no king like him
who was beloved as God.
And God made a king over all Israel.
Nevertheless, even him did outlandish women cause to sin.
Shall we even hearken unto you to do all this great evil,
to transgress against our God in marrying strange wives?
And one of the sons of Joya, the son of Elijah, the high priest,
was son-in-law to Sanphallat the Horonite,
which was a really wicked man,
who's been fighting against the things of God,
the whole book of Nehemiah.
This guy marries his daughter, and Nehemiah's mad,
so Nehemiah did the natural thing at the end of verse 28.
Therefore I chased him from me.
Get out of here! Get out of here!
I just chased him away. Get out of my sight.
And then it says in verse 29,
Remember them, O my God,
because they have defiled the priesthood,
and the covenant of the priesthood and of the Levites,
thus cleansed I them from all strangers,
and appointed the wards of the priests and the Levites,
everyone in his business,
and for the wood offering at times appointed for the first groups.
Remember me, O my God, forgive me.
Now, was Nehemiah a perfect leader?
I don't think Nehemiah was perfect.
Nehemiah was a human being.
He was getting a little frustrated here.
He plucked out some people's hair, chased them around,
yelled at them, cursed them, threw stuff at them.
You know, I'm not saying that he's a perfect leader,
but you know what?
He was a righteous man. He wasn't perfect.
But you know what? I think it just made him mad.
He got sick of it when he saw people that were half in, half out.
He said at the beginning in verse number 24,
he said their children spake half in the speech of Ashtad
and could not speak in the Jews' language,
but according to the language of each people.
And it made him upset. It made him angry to see the mixture.
Remember it said Ephraim had mixed himself among the people?
Ephraim's a cake not turned.
When we start palling around with the world,
and when we start hanging around with the enemies of the cross of Christ,
and we start getting mixed up with these kind of people
and hanging around them, and they're our best buddies and best friends,
look, it makes God mad.
He looks down and says, you need to choose sides.
You need to decide whose side are you on.
You know, you want to pal around with the world.
The Bible says this, the adulterers and adulteresses
know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God.
Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
And we want to have the friendship of the world,
we want to pal around with the world,
we want to go to the rock concerts of the world,
we want to go to the bars of this world,
and you know, we're just going to drink a glass of ice water,
and we're going to evangelize the bar.
And we're going to go to the rock concert,
and we're going to go to all the nightclubs,
and we're going to go hang around with the world and pal around with the world.
You know, what we ought to do is just decide,
you know what, these are my friends right here in the house of God.
And other Christians of life, faith, and practice outside these walls are my friends.
I mean, hey, I'll reach out to the unbelievers of this world
because I want to get them saved.
But we've been hoodwinked by this lifestyle evangelism
and friendship evangelism,
and we've gotten away from just preaching the gospel to people.
You know, we feel like we have to be somebody's best friend
before we can give them the gospel.
You know, I walk up to perfect strangers almost every day of my life
and open my mouth and give them the gospel every day of my life, practically,
and every week of my life for the last 12 years,
and you know what, a lot of them get saved.
Now, it's great if you can win people the Lord on the job.
That's even better.
You know, people that you have a little bit of a relationship with on the job
or cousins or brothers and sisters in bed,
because you're going to have a better time
discipling them and getting them in church
because you're going to see them again and again,
and empowering them and encouraging them
and going back to them and helping them grow in their faith.
But let me tell you something.
Your best friend ought not be an unbeliever.
Now, that's not popular preaching today.
People don't like to hear that.
But our close friends ought to be Christians,
and they ought to be people that are saved and that are living for God,
because the Bible says, look, what part,
the Bible says, what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness?
What communion hath Christ would be like?
Or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?
I mean, if you have that much in common with unbelievers
where you just want to hang out with them all the time,
it's probably because you act like an unbeliever
and live like an unbeliever and do what the unbelievers do.
You know, when I was a six-year-old boy
is when I believed on the Lord Jesus Christ and got saved.
But you know, after I'd been saved for a while,
you know, I had a lot of unsaved friends as a teenager,
and worldly friends.
And you know what?
I fit in with them just fine because I was worldly,
because I was listening to their same music,
I went to their same movies,
I did all the same activities, pretty much.
You know, I've never gotten into drinking or fornication
or anything like that.
But still, I was just a typical, worldly teenager.
And I got along great.
But you know, when I turned about 17 years old
and I got in an independent, fundamental, fire-breathing,
temperamental Baptist church,
you know, at that point,
I got serious about my walk with God.
I started reading the Bible every day for about an hour.
I started trying to get the gospel.
I started knocking on doors, waiting for people to Christ.
I learned about the fact that the NIV was out of hell.
You know, I learned about all these other doctrines
and the truths,
and it dramatically changed my life at that time.
You know, I'd already been saved for ten years.
But that's my life dramatically changed.
And let me tell you something.
My old friends just didn't have as much in common with me anymore.
And I didn't really have to cut them loose.
They pretty much cut me loose
because they weren't interested in talking about the Bible
and the King James Version and the winning souls.
And they didn't want to go to church with me
and listen to my pastor.
I didn't say pastor.
I called the pastor.
And they didn't want to come and listen to my pastor,
you know, rail on all their TV shows and all their music
and the way that they dress.
They didn't want to hear that.
And I'd bring them to church and they didn't get it.
They'd walk out of here like,
why do you like this church?
What is wrong with you?
You know, and I'd try to get them to go soul and even be.
What's going on outdoors?
Let's get people safe.
And then they'd try to get me to go watch all the movies
and to the Christian rock concerts.
And you know, I'd been to some of the Christian rock concerts
as a teen before.
But you know, once I started to realize
that the people were up there singing,
I started realizing when I started to Google their name
because Google was invented at that time, okay?
And Yahoo search was invented, you know, as a teenager.
All of a sudden, my internet started to actually work
at a little bit above a snail's pace.
And so I started to literally Google and Yahoo search
some of the Christian rock artists
that we'd been listening to
and Christian contemporary that we'd been listening to
and find out that some of them were Catholic.
And then others are tongue-speaking Charismatics
that believe you can lose your salvation
and therefore aren't saved.
And then I'd look it up, and there are other denominations
that believe you can lose your salvation and aren't saved.
Then I remember I was looking forward to a new CD release
from a group that I was doing, a Christian group.
And I got the CD from this Christian group,
and I opened it up,
and it had a chapter of the Bible from The Message.
And at first, I didn't even realize it was the Bible
because it was so different.
It said, like, 1 Corinthians 2, and I'm like,
this isn't 1 Corinthians 2.
And I got out my Bible and put it next to it.
I was like, oh, they're just talking about
1 Corinthians 2.
You know, this isn't the Bible
because it was so dramatically different.
But then I began to leap through the sleeve,
and I think somewhere down on the sleeve somewhere
it said, you know, copyright The Message
because The Message is a translation of the Bible,
I guess you could call it.
Paraphrase.
Paraphrase, right.
Yeah, just whatever.
Just chew up the Bible, spit it out however you want,
and call it a paraphrase.
You know, this paraphrase is garbage.
Man does not live by bread alone
but by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God,
not every thought, not every idea.
That's right.
Every word of God is pure.
It's a shield on them to put their trust in him.
Add that item to his words,
let's see what grew there.
I looked at that,
and I just couldn't enjoy that scene anymore.
I thought to myself,
these people are changing and twisting God's Word.
You know, and that was one of the few groups
that I actually thought was saved, you know?
And I think they might have even been saved.
But like all these other ones I'm looking up
were all these Catholics and Lutherans
and holy roller, bark like a dog,
Charismatics and lose your salvation,
now I'm saved, now I'm not,
Nazarenes or whatever.
And I'm looking it all up and seeing all this,
and I'm just saying to myself,
you know, this music is not coming from God's people.
And then I no longer wanted to go to the concert anymore.
That's not what I was into anymore,
and I found out that I didn't have people in common anymore.
You know, I didn't have anything in common
with those friends anymore.
And it was just a natural separation that took place
where I just wasn't close to those people anymore.
And that takes a list.
And it was a really sad thing for me
because that was my whole circle of friends.
It was everybody from church and youth group
and small group Bible study
and the public school, we had Bible club,
and that was all my friends.
Well, they didn't like me anymore.
They probably still don't like me.
And I'm a nice guy who just,
I believe the wrong things for them, okay?
And say the wrong things.
But what happened was,
I started going to an independent fundamental Baptist church,
and guess what, this Baptist church I went to
had about 150 people in it.
No young people.
Our church is filled with young people.
But we had a church with 150 people,
no young people.
Everyone was either a teenager,
there were lots of teenagers,
but I was about 17, you know, going on 18,
and they had a bunch of teens that were like 14 and 15, okay?
And then the next person older than me in the church was 30
and was married with two children.
So that's a big gap.
Because what happened was,
the young adults in the church
were being sent off to Bible college.
So there's just this void of no one from 18 to 29.
There's just nobody.
And I mean, it turned to 150 people.
And so I went through kind of a lonely period.
I mean, I didn't really have,
because I lost all my liberal friends
and there weren't really any new godly friends, you know?
Except for this guy who's married with two kids.
I don't have anything in common with him.
I mean, I just couldn't really relate.
And so I kept trying to stay in the youth group, you know?
So I turned 18 and I was supposed to leave the youth group.
So I just kind of showed up for the teen class, you know,
just hoping that they kind of would just let them skate.
No, they're like, nope, you're out of here.
And they wouldn't let me go on any more activities.
I couldn't go on the bowling activity, the roller skating.
I'm a little bitter about it.
But there is, you know, you can't do all this stuff
because they said, we have a rule.
Once you graduate from high school,
you can't be in the teen class anymore.
And I really graduated six months ago.
I just didn't tell them, because I graduated early.
But by the time I turned 18
and I'd been to Germany for three months and back,
they kind of got the idea,
this guy's not in high school anymore, you know?
And so I pretty much had nothing else.
No social life for a little while there.
And then I got married,
and that was all the social life I needed.
But anyway, that was my friend that I had.
And actually, shortly thereafter, you know,
God sent me a really good friend.
He sent me a guy that was my age after several months,
and he and I became best buddies for a while until I got married.
And so that's what I'm saying, though.
It's just, you know, you got to make sacrifices.
You know, I had to sacrifice.
And I'm kind of a social kind of a guy,
and I was having fun as a teenager,
and I literally sacrificed that fun
in order to do what was right and live for God.
Because you can't be the friend of the world
and live for God 100%,
because you're not going to fit in with the world.
If you sell out for God, just accept it.
You will not be the coolest kid at your school.
You will not be the most popular guy at work.
Hopefully you'll be the best worker on the job.
But that doesn't mean you're going to be the favorite
at the water cooler and in the lunchroom,
because you don't want to talk about, you know,
the new series, Mad Men.
You know, you don't want to talk about
Desperate Housewives' new season.
You know, you don't want to talk about
going to the movies and seeing the new Twilight film,
which, by the way, is wicked and perverted.
It's all about zombie undead predators and pedophiles,
you know, preying on teenage girls
and you are not sin.
I'm going to tell an anonymous story right now.
Somebody who knew better,
somebody who knew that it was wrong,
but just, you know, basically had a poor judgment,
basically took their child to,
or dropped off an older teen at Twilight.
This is someone that I know.
Dropped off an older teen at the new Twilight movie.
And went home and turned on the TV
and literally lightning struck
and destroyed the whole TV,
satellite, DVD, everything.
All of the TV and associated paraphernalia of the TV
to make it work.
Literally.
And then a half mile away,
where there wasn't any lightning,
during the movie, the power went out
and the lady at the theater freaked out
because she was scared because she knew it was a wicked movie.
And she said, this is weird,
that this is what the staff of the theater said.
It's weird that we're watching this movie
of like vampires and creepy stuff
and then the power dies.
I've worked here and the power didn't die.
Did the power ever die in the middle of the movie,
wherever you worked at a theater?
You did? Okay, well, you're ruining my story.
Thanks.
This lady said if it never happened,
it happened during that.
Was it happening during a wicked movie?
Every movie's wicked.
Just fail the test.
Fail.
That was a trick question.
Anyway, the point is,
and I'm not trying to creep you out with weird stories,
but that literally did happen a few weeks ago.
It's true.
So I'm not trying to creep you out with weird stories,
but I am trying to creep you out with weird stories
because of the fact that Twilight is a wicked movie
and I don't need power to go out of the light
and you strike to tell me that.
It's a bad movie.
Did you know that it was written by a Mormon?
Who knew that?
That Twilight is written by a Mormon, about Mormon,
and that she received the storyline of the movie through dreams.
Did you know that?
That's what she said.
She said that the storyline of the movie came to her in dreams
and she's a Mormon.
And that's what you want to watch, right?
That's what you want to watch.
Undead zombie vampires.
And did you know that in the old vampire movies,
the vampire used to be the bad guy?
Did you know that?
He was the bad guy.
Now they're the hero, and literally.
My friend, listen to me.
Don't get mad at me when I tell you the truth.
Millions and millions of teenage girls right now
are idolizing and slobbering over posters of wicked, satanic vampires.
It's true.
That's where we come.
They start them on Harry Potter when they're a little kid.
Then they get a little older,
they get them on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
to get them a little more into the occult.
Then the next thing that they get them to is Lord of the Rings.
And then when they get a little older, they can get into Twilight.
You know, I mean, this is a plan of savior.
To expose them to the occult,
to expose them to witchcraft and sorcery.
I mean, I've seen little children on the playground chanting spells
that they learned from Harry Potter,
speaking in tongues on the playground, you know, whatever,
saying weirdo stuff that they don't know what it means.
And it's something that we need to stay away from.
And, you know, we don't want to be half in that world right there,
those friends, that crowd, that entertainment,
and then think that we can come to church on a Sunday and Wednesday
and just switch into spiritual mode.
You know, we need to be filled with the Spirit every day.
We need to walk with God every day.
Just get up and read your Bible and just live a godly life every day.
And I hope that tomorrow you're going to live the same way that you live today.
And have the same thought life and the same attitude
and the same friends and the same righteousness.
And I'm not saying all your friends have to go to church here.
You know, I have acquaintances out in the world,
but my closest friends are right here.
You're sitting here, you're my closest friend.
And also other believers across this country that believe like I believe.
Those are my close friends.
But I've got to hurry up here, I'm getting close to running out of time.
Let me give you some scriptures here.
I gave you the bad examples.
I gave you those guys who had half their beard cut off
and then they were fully cut off and were half naked.
That wasn't good. That looked stupid.
Which is the same way we'll look to the world
if we try to be an ambassador for Christ.
Just like if they showed up at Moab, they'd be laughed out of there.
If we show up to a lost and dying world with the gospel and that's how we look,
they're not going to take us seriously from the first part of the message.
The second thing we saw was Eutychus.
He can't decide whether to get in church or not.
So he's sitting in the window hanging half in and half out.
Then we saw Hosea teach us about a baker who only cooks half the pancake.
It's going to taste like garbage.
It's going to be like a lukewarm beverage that God wants to spew out of his mouth.
Revelation 3.
We saw Nehemiah angry, frustrated when he saw a mixture of God's people with the heathen.
He said you ought not marry the unsaved.
And they were marrying unsaved girls.
And you young guys don't even think about marrying somebody who's not saved.
But now let's give a positive example.
We're going to give one positive example quickly.
Turn to Joshua 14.8.
This is our one positive example and then we'll be done.
The positive example is Caleb.
Caleb in the Bible was a man who the Bible says over and over,
Holy followed the Lord.
Not halfway.
He gave it his all.
I mean W-H-O-L-L-Y.
Holy followed the Lord.
You're in Joshua 14. I'll read you some other scriptures.
Numbers 32-11.
God told the children of Israel that anyone above the age of 20 was not going into the Promised Land and flowed with milk and honey,
which represents the victorious blessings of the Christian life
where you're winning the battle, where you're living in the Promised Land.
He said they did not Holy follow me.
But in verse 12 he said,
Save Caleb the son of Jephunneh the king of Zion,
and Joshua the son of Nun,
for they have Holy followed the Lord.
Deuteronomy 1.36. Don't turn there.
Save Caleb the son of Jephunneh,
he shall see it,
and to him will I give the land that he had trod upon him to his children,
because he had Holy followed the Lord.
Look at Joshua 14.8.
This is Caleb speaking.
Nevertheless, my brethren that went up with me made the heart of the people melt,
but I Holy followed the Lord my God.
And Moses sware on that day, saying,
Surely the land whereon thy feet have trodden
shall be thine inheritance of thy children's forever,
because thou hast Holy followed the Lord my God.
Look at verse 14.
Hebron therefore became the inheritance of Caleb the son of Jephunneh the king of Zion,
unto this day because that he Holy followed the Lord God of Israel.
Look.
How many times did he say it here?
He said once in Numbers, twice in Numbers,
a third time in Deuteronomy,
and three times in Joshua 14.
Six times God says,
Let me make it clear to you why Caleb was the greatest man in that nation along with Joshua.
Because they Holy followed the Lord.
They got all the way.
Look.
Put on the whole armor of God.
He said unto Timothy, a couple of weeks ago on Wednesday night, if I remember,
he said,
Meditate upon these things.
Give thyself wholly to them that that profiting may appear to all.
Just decide you don't want to be a halfway Christian.
One foot in the world.
One foot in your rock and roll buddies,
and one foot in the bar,
one foot in karaoke,
one foot in the concerts,
one foot in worldliness,
one foot in everything.
You know what?
Just get all the way in and say Christ is my life.
The Bible is life.
Soul winning is life.
Get all the way in.
And be a Caleb.
Be a Joshua.
Let's bow our heads in a word of prayer.
Father, please just help us to realize that we can't have it both ways.
Help us to realize that a regimen of reading the Bible
and then turning on a twilight is not going to create a balanced diet in our life.
It's not going to give us balance.
The world will tell us that it gives us balance, dear God,
but you basically tell us that it makes you sick
when people try to mix hot and cold together.
It comes out with a lukewarm.
Father, please just help every single person who's here
to understand maybe one of these stories that I told from the Bible,
maybe one of the four stories or all of them,
as an aggregate of your God.
Whatever it is, help something in the sermon to speak to their heart.
For them to say, you know what?
It's time to just jump in.
It's time to just sell out.
It's time to turn over that pancake and cook the other side.
Help us, dear God, to all of us be like Caleb
and to follow you with our whole heart,
to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, our might, our strength.
And in Jesus' name we pray this thing.